Before college started, Lin Qile and his family went on a short trip to the coastal city of Qingdao.
The person who came to the station to pick them up was a strange boss wearing a shirt and trousers, accompanied by his secretary and driver. Lin Qile stared at him blankly on the platform, and it was the strange boss who smiled and patted Lin Qile on the forehead first: "Cherry, have you forgotten me?"
Lin Qile didn't know what to call him.
Electrician Lin said from the side: "This is your Uncle Wang, the one who bought you Lipu taro at the construction site in the mountains before, the Uncle Wang!"
Lin Qile exclaimed, "Hello, Uncle Wang!"
Uncle Wang has thick eyebrows and a bright smile. He said, "How small were the cherries back then? They were only this small." He gestured with his hands beside his legs and said to the electrician Lin and his wife, "Now they have grown into such beautiful girls!"
Uncle Wang owns a trading company in Qingdao and has many properties. He cordially invited Electrician Lin and his family to live in his recently renovated sea view villa: "No one is here, no trouble, no trouble! Brother Lin, don't, don't, why should we be polite to each other! Look, it's been so many years, and you haven't come to Qingdao to play."
This was the first time that Lin Yingtao had seen a real villa since she was a child. She ran to the first floor and looked up. Uncle Wang came in from behind and said, "Yingtao, go upstairs and take a look!"
Lin Yingtao held the stairs and went up to the second floor.
"Jiang Qiaoxi," she wrote in a text message on her mobile phone, standing on the balcony of the garden, feeling the evening sea breeze of Qingdao, "I saw the villa today!"
"It's the kind of big villa that you often see in TV dramas."
Uncle Wang's driver brought in a barrel of Tsingtao beer and ordered a table of seafood. Electrician Lin was very embarrassed, and Uncle Wang said, "These are all freshly caught by nearby fishermen. Brother Lin, if you come in other seasons, they may not be available!"
At the dinner table, Electrician Lin and Boss Wang were reminiscing about the past, and he said with emotion: "With my current annual salary, I can probably only buy this square meter of yours."
Boss Wang was sitting opposite, smiling the way successful people usually do, a smile that they themselves might not even be aware of.
"After all these years, you still haven't been promoted in the system," Boss Wang said, "Good people don't get good rewards, Brother Lin."
Lin Yingtao came out of the kitchen at this time. The kitchen was brand new and she had never cooked there before. Lin Yingtao put down the plate of scallops in her hand and sat next to them with an excited look on her face.
"Which school in Beijing did Cherry get admitted to?" asked Boss Wang.
"Beijing Normal University." Lin's mother said from the side.
Boss Wang looked at Lin Yingtao with a smile, nodded, and said to Lin the Electrician, "Hey, good people always get some rewards."
Dad always says, Cherry, you are only eighteen years old.
But Lin Yingtao felt that at the age of eighteen, she seemed to have experienced a lifetime.
Especially recently, every time she hears a song, she feels like she is listening to her own experiences, whether it is "You and I kissed goodbye on a deserted street, and my heart is waiting to welcome sadness" or "I miss you day after day, and I am still lonely."
Often, while listening to the story, she would sit cross-legged on the bed and start wiping her tears.
She was about to leave for Beijing, and Lin Yingtao put the new MP4 player her father had bought for her, which was filled with sad songs, into her schoolbag.
She lost the MP3 player that had accompanied her for many years, but fortunately the tape that Jiang Qiaoxi gave her was still there. Stefanie Sun, who had just debuted in 2000, was squatting on the cover, with short green hair and a naive look of someone who had just entered the world.
Because her father had to work overtime, he could only send Lin Yingtao to the train station. Lin Yingtao hugged her father on the platform and couldn't help crying again. She wanted to be more determined, but it was difficult for her to control her reluctance.
Electrician Lin smiled and patted her on the back: "You will be back for the National Day. Study hard at school and be sure to pay attention to safety. Look, Yu Qiao is going to laugh at you again."
Lin Yingtao raised her head and wiped her tears with her sleeve. "Goodbye, Dad!" she said.
Mother Lin got on the train. She bought an extra ticket temporarily. She was still worried and planned to send her child to Beijing school with squad leader Yu. Yu Qiao and his son and Qin Yeyun were sitting in the next car. Mother Lin took out a plastic bag from her daughter's luggage. Inside was an apple that she had peeled at home. She broke the apple and ate it with her daughter.
"When she was little, I always doubted whether Cherry would be able to get into college," said Lin's mother. "She didn't like studying and just played all day."
Lin Yingtao was eating an apple in silence, coughing from time to time. She had cried too much on the platform.
"When you go to school, make more friends and get along well with your roommates," my mother advised. "If you meet a boy you like, you can have a relationship with him..."
Lin Yingtao started coughing again, as if she was choked by the apple.
"Is Yu Qiao's school very close to you?" Mom suddenly said.
"Not close," Lin Yingtao said, "It takes half an hour by car."
"When you have nothing to do on weekends, you can go around Beijing and visit more tourist attractions," said my mother.
When they arrived at Beijing West Railway Station, a bus from Beijing Normal University came to pick up the new students. Lin Yingtao said goodbye to Uncle Yu and the others, and then got on the bus with her mother.
Advertisements recommending freshmen were everywhere in the school. Following the guidance of the 2008 freshman group for preschool education majors, Lin Yingtao registered an account on the campus network. She searched for Yu Qiao, Cai Fangyuan, Du Shang, Qin Yeyun, Huang Zhanjie, Xin Tingting, Geng Xiaoqing, Feng Letian... She added everyone, and almost all of her classmates' school information was changed from high school to college.
Of course, Lin Yingtao also habitually searched for "Jiang Qiaoxi" in the search bar, and sure enough, there was no result at all.
According to the dormitory information sent to her, Lin Yingtao did not live with her classmates of the same major. She was "lucky" and "unlucky" to be assigned to the only empty bed in the postgraduate female dormitory of preschool education, and had to live with five senior sisters who were more than four years older than her.
Mother Lin called Class Leader Yu downstairs. She said with some concern, "Why did Yingtao get the job? Yingtao has been away from her classmates since she entered junior high school..."
Lin Yingtao didn't react much. She looked down at the empty search results for "Jiang Qiaoxi" on her phone and felt disheartened.
When she went to the dormitory to put down her luggage, her roommates were not there. Mother Lin helped her daughter clean up a little and took out her luggage. She was a little worried and said, "Cherry, if you are not used to it, call home, okay?"
Lin Yingtao nodded. She and her mother went to see the canteen together and strolled around the area. She sent her mother to the school gate, and then watched her mother walk through the unfamiliar streets of Beijing to catch the bus. Lin Yingtao's tears suddenly burst out again.
In mid-September 2008, Lehman Brothers Bank in the United States declared bankruptcy.
The Shanghai Composite Index also fell below 2000 points. Lin Yingtao was sitting on the second floor of the Xinlequn Canteen of Beijing Normal University. Yu Qiao, who was coming from the college to eat, told her that Cai Fangyuan's father was in the hospital.
"No way?" She looked up in surprise, "Just because of the stock market?"
Yu Qiao picked shrimp from the dish and saw Lin Yingtao staring at the tip of his chopsticks, so he threw the shrimp into Lin Yingtao's bowl. "Cai Fangyuan asked for leave right after school started, saying that he would earn the money back for his father in the future. Only then did Uncle Cai breathe a sigh of relief."
Lin Yingtao on the opposite side suddenly laughed.
Yu Qiao said: "Still laughing."
Lin Yingtao said: "I think Cai Fangyuan is quite reliable, much more reliable than Uncle Cai's stock speculation."
The Hang Seng Index in Hong Kong fell to 17,000 points, a drop of 10,000 points from the beginning of the year. The global economic situation is getting worse, but in the campus cafeteria of Beijing Normal University, Lin Yingtao can only smell the aroma of food.
"By the way," Yu Qiao said as he sat opposite her. Some girls looked at him. "Jiang Qiaoxi didn't go to UC Berkeley."
Lin Yingtao suddenly raised her head.
"Those two people from Class 8 and Class 15 have seen Cen Xiaoman," Yu Qiao looked at her and said nonchalantly, "Cen Xiaoman has been asking them to look for Jiang Qiaoxi, but they haven't found him. They asked some local Chinese students, but they couldn't find him either. Recently, they said that they commissioned a teacher to check their academic affairs system, but there was no such person among the new students."
Lin Yingtao looked at Yu Qiao's face and her lips moved.
"Maybe he went to another school." Yu Qiao said after looking at her reaction.
"Hey, hey!" Yu Qiao couldn't help but said, "Why are you crying so hard now?"
Yu Qiao was helpless. He noticed that several girls from the Normal University at the next table kept looking at him, as if they were looking at a heartless scumbag. He said, "Excuse me, do you have any tissues?"
The dormitory head of the graduate dormitory where Lin Yingtao lived was called Meng Lijun. She was a fierce-looking lady with long black hair. She usually wore black high heels six or seven centimeters high to class, and her lips were as red as a child who ate breakfast every day.
At the first night talk, Lin Yingtao sat in bed, with the flashlights from the cell phones of five senior schoolmates shining cruelly on her face. The dormitory lights had been turned off long ago, but the air conditioner was on. Lin Yingtao squinted her eyes, as if she was enduring torture.
"Le Le," senior Meng Lijun called her from the bed opposite. She was only wearing underwear and holding a cell phone. "Come and tell us if you have a boyfriend. Have you kissed him, hugged him, or slept with him?"
The author has something to say: －－－－－－－－－－－－－－－
Notes to this chapter:
＊Xiaonei.com: Founded in December 2005 by Wang Xing, Wang Huiwen, Lai Binqiang and Tang Yang, all college students from Tsinghua University and Tianjin University. In July 2009, it was renamed Renren.com.
＊Cherry lives with fellow graduate school students because of plot requirements and has nothing to do with the specific school.